Restless Heart Syndrome
by karebear
Summary: "He's running, not escaping. Why can't they see the difference?" Sequel (that can stand alone) to Winter's Grasp. Title courtesy of Green Day.


Anders whimpers in the quiet, curling up around the pain, concentrating on breathing, trying to force it away, or out. But he can't. He reaches out for some kind of comfort, the energy he's always able to pull from within except he _can't_ this time, obviously. He can feel the walls crashing up against his consciousness and they hurt, almost worse than the lashes across his back. There's still poison inside him, magebane, squeezing him from the inside out. It's hard to breathe. He can't stay still but he can't move without choking on the firework bursts of agony as his body resists that plan. He wipes his arm across his face, unsurprised but still ashamed by the fact that his sleeve comes away soaked: by tears, by spit and snot. He doesn't care.

The whipping wasn't all that bad. He tries, over and over, to convince himself of this fact. It wasn't that bad, it could have been worse. He's still conscious, for one thing. He's in pain, but it's nothing he can't handle. Or at least that's what he says_, _because the only other option is admitting that _it hurts_. And that feels too much like letting them win.

He rests his chin on his knees and shifts back into the darkened corner.

"Anders..."

The familiar voice makes him flinch. He glances up, just briefly, he can't see anything except the outline of her, blocked by shadow. He looks away, traces his finger lightly over the stone floor. He's in the dungeons, but not in a cell. Greagoir didn't _say _anything about solitary, or maybe he did and it's too hard to remember right now. Everything feels kind of fuzzy. It just hurts a lot. There's some blood, on the floor, but not a lot of it. He can feel it sticking to his skin. The cuts are not that deep. The damage would be easy to heal _if they would let him_, but of course they won't.

"What do you want?" he mutters darkly.

Rylock shakes her head, and settles next to him. He _lets_ her, and he doesn't know why, it's completely stupid. She brushes his sweaty, tangled hair out of his eyes, ignoring his half-hearted protests. She pulls a nearly-empty waterskin from the travel bag she's _still holding onto_, and makes him drink it. He does, even though he winds up coughing up most of it.

She was there, _watching_ when Greagoir carried out the sentence. She was there when he _gave _the sentence, it's _her fault_ he did. She didn't say anything about it, not that she would, _nobody _does, not even Irving. Not even him. He doesn't fight, he just lets them lock the shackles tight, so he can't move, can't get away, where would he go? He tried running, it didn't work, he'd always known it wouldn't. He knows it before he ever starts. He's _running_, not _escaping_, why can't they see the difference?

Twenty lashes this time, which is a lot but not the most he's ever had. He could hear them, cracking down, biting into the air, into his skin. He could _obviously_ feel them, but they set him off-balance, mixing all together, he couldn't catch his breath or steel himself, somehow he'd forgotten how bad it was, why he was supposed to be afraid of this. They do this because it's supposed to make him too afraid to run. He lost the count somewhere between five and seven, which makes it worse and pisses him off, because then he's _completely _at their mercy, with nothing to latch onto _but _pain, no way of telling how close it is to ending. But Greagoir said twenty and Anders believes him. Twenty new lines carved into his body, twenty shallow scars unless he heals them, but he won't. He wouldn't even if they gave him permission, not that they ever would.

He wasn't paying attention to Rylock watching him, _obviously_, but Anders can pretty well imagine the stubborn glare on her face, the fire in her dark eyes. He knows she thinks he deserves this. Well he _does_, right? He broke the rules, he ran away. If he could just _settle_, he wouldn't have to _hurt_. It's what they all say.

"No offense," he says, to the stone floor beneath him. _Not _to her. "But I don't really feel like talking right now."

"Anders, do you think I _wanted_ this?"

"How the hell should I know?" he growls. "_You_ brought me back."

"You let me."

He nods. Of course he did. She'd found him out in the forest, aimlessly wandering. That's all he ever does. They ask him what he wants and he can't answer. What is he looking for out there? What does he think he'll find? He just shakes his head, and he starts to cry before they even touch him. They think he's afraid of the pain, and he is, but he isn't. He is _too afraid_, and not enough, at the same time. They think he runs to get away from them, and he does, but he doesn't actually hate the tower. Not really. He _just can't sit still_. He slams against the bars of his cell, the walls of the dorm. He's always searching, climbing, they keep pulling him back down and he never finds what he's looking for, maybe it doesn't _exist_.

"You're going to run again, aren't you?" Rylock murmurs.

Anders shrugs, because she's still a templar and he won't tell her the truth even though they both know that it is true. It still seems like a dumb thing to admit when he is still bleeding from the punishment for _this _attempt. Anders glances up and sees Greagoir across the room; aware of them, but not watching. The whip is still curled up in the Knight Commander's hand. Anders know that the templars still own him, he still _doesn't_ know, for sure, that Rylock doesn't have orders to throw him into a cell as soon as he's capable of standing.

"I'm not running away," he finally tells her. The words come out rough and raw. He realizes he actually is crying, breaking. Not because of the pain, not entirely. This is something different, and worse. It is fear and confusion. Breaking against the bars.

Rylock blinks, surprised. "Then what are you doing?"

Anders shrugs again. He _doesn't know_, he can't explain it. He's just _running_. Not away from anything, not _to_ anything. He's _just running_.

He did it before he ever came to the tower, it has nothing to do with the templars and their law. When he was a kid, he was trying to get away from the never-ending sameness of the fields, the exhausting, painful, sunup to sundown work, and the taunts of the other kids who were older and bigger and meaner then him. Even though they were all poor together, his differentness marked him. He couldn't understand what they said, half the time, except that he _felt_ its cruelty. He didn't _talk, _except to his parents, in the language of the Anderfels that he doesn't remember anymore. And then he lost even them.

"I do what they tell me," he pleads. Every time. He _comes back_. But that doesn't matter to them. It's against the law to run, why can't he just _settle_?

Rylock doesn't answer, she just cleans the blood from his back, silently, ignoring his protests and his halfhearted attempts to pull away. Her touch hurts but she knows what she's doing, _of course_. Because she's done it before.

"You're not afraid of them," Rylock observes.

"Yes, I am," Anders admits, quickly and without thinking. Somehow he is aware, through the fiery pain and choking confusion that she said _them_. He doesn't bother to correct her and he doesn't know what that means. Shouldn't he be afraid of her too?

Rylock clicks her teeth against her tongue and pulls away from him. She shifts so that he's forced to look at her when he glances up, to track her motion. He meets her eyes for the first time since she'd locked the manacles around his wrists out in the snow.

"You still run," she demands. It's a stubborn accusation, but he can hear the hitch in her voice. She's mad at him and afraid for him, all tangled up together, which he understands because that's _what they are_.

"_I have to_," he insists, defiant and desperate. He knows nobody gets it, but that doesn't matter. He can't slow down enough to try to explain it. And nobody listens anyway.

Rylock snorts softly. She sits down next to him, and uncurls her hand, palm up. She stares down at it for what feels like a _long_ time. "I used to run away," she told him. "I mean, not like you. But I'd skip class and go wandering around in the Chantry."

"That doesn't count."

Rylock shrugs. "It counted enough."

Anders knows the punishment for skipping class because he used to do that to, and they've talked about it. The Chantry uses the threat of the cane to force kids into silent obedience, mage and templar. He may possibly be the only mage who knows this, because it's not like the templars make a habit of whining about their childhoods. Just Rylock, who tells the truth, who talks to him, even when she shouldn't. Anders barely remembers what it was like to be afraid of those beatings. If he _ever_ was. He isn't sure. They tried so hard to get him to just follow the rules. And it hurts, obviously, when he doesn't. So why can't he?

"The Chantry's okay," Rylock tells him. "It's... safe." Better than the Denerim streets anyway.

"I don't _want_ safe," Anders retorts.

"I know."


End file.
